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“I think I would have liked your grandma.” He sounded tired.
“I think you would have too. Wake me up if you need me. Okay?”
“Early shift tomorrow. My phone…” He shuffled around, produced his phone and slid it under the pillow. “Alarm is on.”
“I’m coming in for lunch.”
We were being so domestic that it hurt my heart. But at the same time?
“Thank you for my kiss. I hope I didn’t ruin everything.”
“Go to sleep,” he whispered. “You ruined nothing. It was…a silly thing to do, but we’ll—”
“It wasn’t silly. It was, honestly, amazing. I loved it. I really did. Another tick on my bucket list. Benjamin Desjardins kissed Hugo Burrows, and he liked it.”
“Would you do it again?”
“Kiss you?”
“Yeah?”
“Absolutely.”
He shuffled closer to me. I rolled onto my side so we were facing each other. He was so close to me.
“I’m going to ruin your life,” he whispered. “In a good way.”
“I know you will.” I was still holding his hand and brought it up to my mouth, kissed the tips of his fingers, curled them back into mine and placed our hands gently on my chest. Over my heart.
“This is not going to be easy.” His words were soft.
“Wrong,” I murmured. “This is going to be really easy. Slow. Steady. You and me.”
“Promise me something?”
I would have promised him anything. Anything at all. I nodded. I hoped he could tell.
“Promise me you will be patient with me. I’ll say the wrong things and do stupid things, and I will ruin all the things that are good. I always do. I’m sick, Ben. Really sick. I will always be sick, always fighting the things I can’t control, and when things get tough, all my demons come out to play. I’m not easy to live with. Not easy to deal with.”
“You’re amazing. And when it gets tough? We’ll deal with that.”
“You promise?”
“I promise. Now go to sleep.”
He did. I lay awake with his hand in mine until the sun started to rise, bathing the kitchen in a grey glow. I couldn’t settle. Couldn’t sleep. I’d started something last night that I had no idea how to follow through. But I wanted to. I wanted to so badly that it hurt.
Hugo
I’d woken up in a panic, my heart beating far too fast, my body in that fight-or-flight state where I truly didn’t know what was going on. I was just terrified. Terrified of everything from the soft light from the kitchen and the snoring coming from the bed and that I was somehow still wearing all my clothes and standing on the floor in Benjamin Desjardins’ tiny windowless bedroom with my phone vibrating like mad in my hand, and I couldn’t figure out how to switch itoff.
Everything was suddenly too much, too hard, and I moved around the flat in a trance trying to find my shoes and my pen and my squishy ball, and I needed that pen. The blue one. I always had the blue pen. Fuck.
I fled. There was no other word for it. I didn’t have the strength to deal with things this morning, and I certainly didn’t want to wake him up and have a conversation, say all the wrong things. I knew how much of a coward I was, fleeing out the door. The lock clicked behind me—I was on the Tube before I realised I’d forgotten my cereal bars, those disgusting, nutritional lifesaving pieces of chewy sawdust that were part of my long-term recovery plan.
I’d always have an issue with food. With putting nutrition in my body. With being good to myself. Treating myself with kindness. All words that had been shoved down my throat until I truly wanted to throw up.
Things had been stable for a good while now, but today, nothing was stable.
